Monday, October 16, 2017

God there's so much grace here

I have been sleeping for the past two nights on the chastity couch, which is what we call the chaise lounge in my room. I think it's because it's fall break, so it feels enough like vacation that you're allowed to break from normal person routines like going to sleep in your own bed.

It's also because I'm staying up too late doing all the things I usually don't allow myself to have time for: like journaling and blogging, collecting disparate thoughts from different corners of my mind, so I'm not getting enough sleep, because I refuse to sleep in. There are too many good hours from 6am to 10am to miss out on all of them. So I sleep by my window, in order that the grey morning sun will wake me up.

Saturday night, I wanted to sleep by my half-open window because the thunder crashed through the sky outside, and a couple cracks of lightning snapped through the dark. The wind rattled at the ajar panes and blew in just the tiniest little bit of rain, so that the driftwood with the excerpt from the Neruda sonnet etched into it was stained with water. It was a mighty storm and I wanted to sleep in its arms.

I woke up gently, in the limp grey light of the morning, soft as a fawn's back.

An aluminum street light is smashed in the middle, and its head lies, severed from its pillar, on the other side of the path. A tree lies perpendicular near its base.

This morning, I woke up and saw sunrise shining gently outside my window, even though it faces West. That's magnificent, I thought, and smiled as I sunk back into the grey comfort of the chaise. The ceaseless storm-front of the weekend has resolved itself into a cool, calm morning, fresh and washed clean. A few jewel-toned leaves start to appear among the green and browning trees.

As I took off running down the path into the cold morning, I saw the three swans fly [from where?] onto the glistening water. I've seen those swans swim and glide, but never fly. Their wings were arched and strong, and they landed in the water without displacing a single drop, it seemed. They glide right into the sparkle of the sunlight dancing on the water.

The aluminum street light still lies across the path, so I run back the other way, through the woods, down the calvary path.

And I think as I run in the fresh, crisp, finally autumn air, teeming with sunshine and living, dying leaves damp from the rain, and wind blowing in sweater season from the North: God, there's so much grace here.

This is not Chinatown— and I am not drinking whiskey— this is a leftover white wine in Harlem sort of night. I call my mother, crying,...

About me

"I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow."--Madeleine L'Engle